Allies and adversaries alike have been moved by the pace of combat action in the Persian Gulf war, and by the total information dominance of the coalition forces over the Iraqi forces. Adversary threat analysis reveals that the Russians and Chinese have been particularly intrigued by aspects relating to command and control warfare and believe that to win on the battlefield it is first necessary to win the battle of the airwaves. Each country has crafted future warfighting plans which feature disruption of the adversary's command and control channels by penetrating classified communications networks, falsifying radio traffic and denying radio services using a variety of techniques. Governments are now trying to develop programs that address this new and very real threat to RF based military communications networks.
Although the survivability of communications networksCprimarily represented by the InternetChas benefitted from significant DoD and commercial research and development (R&D), the same cannot be said for wireless networks, tactical communications networks, or tactical datalinks. Moreover, as dependence on information systems and the infrastructure supporting them increases, however, so too does our vulnerability. In light of the global acceptance of the Internet, and in recognition of its associated vulnerabilities, many new companies have been formed to offer mitigating solutions to the vulnerability dilemma. As a result, there is an abundance of intrusion detection systems for wire based Internet connections and wired based networks, however, there are no solutions that would extend such a capability to the military=s wireless communications grid. Consequently, our deployed military personnel have not been afforded the level of protection currently available to the commercial Internet user who connects to the Internet via a wired connection. This deficiency has not escaped the notice of our adversaries, who have expressed their intent to exploit this weakness through jamming, falsification of commands and reports, corruption of data, communications mimicking, and altering of friendly traffic volumes. In fact, there are no known wireless intrusion detection programs that can provide the basis for assuring the survivability of future military communication systems, such as the Joint Tactical Radio System (“JTRS”).
This threat extends to the Tactical Internet (which is a limited version of the Internet specially adapted for use by military units in the field), as well as to the wireless commercial Internet. Through the past ten years the wide acceptance of the Internet and the technologies that support it have dramatically altered business processes, and the Internet has ushered in an entirely new generation of electronic commerce businesses. Heretofore, many businesses have relied on manpower and voice telephones as the principal means to distribute information to a geographically distributed population. As a result of low-cost high-power computing and the Internet revolution, many businesses (most notably consumer lending institutions, travel agents, and retail outlets) have reengineered themselves to distribute information electronically over the Internet and over wireless links to the Internet. Given the inherent advantages of high-speed data networks over manpower intensive processes this methodology for knowledge distribution is especially efficient for the distribution of time sensitive information. Today, time sensitive information is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, anywhere in the world. All that is required is a home computer and a connection to the Internet. Increasingly, the connection to the Internet is via wireless links.
Traditionally, the Department of Defense (“DoD”) has relied on man-in-the-loop systems to distribute time sensitive information (via radio) to its units deployed in the field. Following the general mode established by commercial industry, the military has sought to realize the capabilities of the Internet as a preferred means to distribute their own form of time-critical information (situation assessment, maneuver control, surveillance data). However, the military usually conducts its operations on the move and the fixed cable infrastructure of the telecommunications grid is not conducive to mobile operations. Accordingly, the military has extended some of the capabilities of the Internet over RF waveforms using its existing radio resources. To meet this requirement, the “Wireless Communications Grid”, also known as the Tactical Internet (“TI”), architecture was developed. In this architecture, two existing RF systems were integrated together to provide limited Internet services to the military. The two systems include the Enhanced Position Locating Radio System (“EPLRS”) that acts as the Internet infrastructure and the Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (“SINCGARS”) that provides connectivity between the user and the Internet infrastructure.
Throughout the U.S. military the total number of EPLRS radios service-wide are in the tens of thousands and the SINCGARS radios service-wide are in the hundreds of thousands. The military also utilizes a number of RF based tactical data links such as the Link-11 and the Link-16. An objective of the present invention, therefore, is to produce profound Information Warfare (IW) survivability of these existing RF networks, while embracing the transition into next generation radio systems as represented by the Joint Tactical Radio System.
The present invention addresses all these problems and can be scaled across the entire tactical wireless environment. The present invention, however, does not simply apply threat-specific or >point=solutions useful in the commercial Internet Protocol (“IP”) environment to the wireless environment. Instead, the present invention provides a unique and novel solution to the special problems associated with wireless networks in general and tactical wireless networks in particular.